


Given the Choice

by notyouranswer (gorgeouschaos)



Series: Defined by Echo [2]
Category: The Magnus Archives (Podcast)
Genre: Angst, Character Study, Fate & Destiny, Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-02-26
Updated: 2020-02-26
Packaged: 2021-02-19 03:42:17
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 531
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/22904599
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/gorgeouschaos/pseuds/notyouranswer
Summary: Jon wonders, sometimes, if he’s ever had a choice about any of this. Usually, he decides he didn’t.(For someone who can get anyone to tell the truth, he’s an excellent liar.)
Series: Defined by Echo [2]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1646350
Comments: 2
Kudos: 68





	Given the Choice

**Author's Note:**

> "Given the choice I’d never choose this damned pain and suffering for myself but somehow it finds me.”  
> \--Charles Bukowski  
> No idea if this is canon compliant-- I’m only on episode 91. But hey, I had fun with it.  
> Hope you like it, and I live for feedback :)

Jon wonders, sometimes, if he’s ever had a choice about any of this. Usually, he decides he didn’t.

(For someone who can get anyone to tell the truth, he’s an excellent liar.)

\---

Some of Jon’s earliest memories are of reading. Most of them, in fact. He’s always been precocious-- or, as many of his classmates called him, a show-off. 

He’d never seen the harm in knowing things, not until the Institute. He’d taken joy in knowing things. 

Something clicks into place. 

It sounds like the click of _play_ being pressed on a tape recorder.

(Or perhaps the clicking of a spider’s mandibles.)

_A Guest for Mr. Spider_ falls into Jon’s grasp. 

(He does not wonder why for a long time.)

He survives. 

And he remembers. 

_Click._

“Tell me the truth!” Jon shouts at his grandmother, too caught up in his anger to care about the hurt on her face, and she does. 

They don’t speak to each other for three days afterward.

Jon still believes it was worth it. 

The truth always is.

_Click._

Jon gets hit more times than he can count. They hit him for being scrawny, for being smarter than them, for being an arrogant pain in the ass. 

He learns how to hit back early on. 

Jon’s scrawny, but he’s vicious. He splits his knuckles more times than he can count, and he sprains his wrist once when his fist hits a bully at an awkward angle, but he gets better fast. 

His grandmother pinches her lips into a tight line and doesn’t comment when he comes home with bruises and split lips. 

(Jon wonders, but does not ask, if his mother had been the same way. If his father had.

_Tell the truth_ rises to his lips on more than one occasion, but he doesn’t let the words out.)

He loses more fights than he wins, of course-- he never stops being scrawny, even if he does get taller-- but he develops a reputation for being a bad target. 

No one wants to pick a fight with someone who isn’t afraid of anything anymore. Someone whose eyes light up just a little too much at the sight of blood.

_Click_.

“And why do you want to work here, Mr. Sims?” Elias Bouchard asks. His stare makes Jon want to shift in his seat. 

Jon refuses to allow himself the weakness, though, so he holds Elias’ gaze. 

The look in the other man’s eyes is something Jon has seen a thousand times in his own reflection.

“Because I need to know everything I can,” Jon says, and Elias smiles in approval.

_Click_.

___

He heads home in a daze after Elias gives him his job back.

It doesn’t seem like he has a choice about any of this. Elias has made the decision that Jon is going to stay Head Archivist, and some… some _god_ has decided that Jon is going to do just that. 

Some god who Jon has no choice but to serve, apparently. 

_Thing is_ , Jon thinks, staring at his apartment ceiling, _I never really had a choice about ending up here._

(He’s had practice lying to himself. It’s why he’s still alive.)

_Click._


End file.
